Current encryption standards include the DES and the 3DES encryption standards. Federal Information Processing Standards Publication (FIPS PUB) 197 was issued on Nov. 26, 2001 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) introducing the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). The AES specifies a FIPS-approved cryptographic algorithm that may be utilized to protect electronic data.
The AES algorithm may use cryptographic keys of 128, 192, and 256 bits to encrypt and decrypt data in blocks of 128. In addition, the AES algorithm may be implemented in software, firmware, hardware, or any combination thereof. However, the AES encryption/decryption standard requires significant processing capabilities for implementation, especially if the implementation is exclusively in software. As a result, significant processing loads may be placed on a digital signal processor (DSP), or another system processor, during operation of a device utilizing the AES encryption/decryption standard. As a result, a DSP or other system processor may become overloaded when processing AES encryption and decryption, thereby resulting in poor system performance.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.